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June 16, 2014 marks the 100th day, since MH370’s Boeing 777-200 (Reg. #9M-MRO) airliner vanished with 239 people on-board. June 16 also marks the three-month anniversary, since the MH370 story broke internationally, and especially 24/7 on CNN International (see “CNN Coverage Mirrors LinkedIn Buzz on MH370,” as featured May 16 on LinkedIn Pulse Airlines & Aviation, Media, and Social Media Channels).

Family members of some of the people aboard the flight gathered in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur for a small ceremony marking 100 days, USA Today reports Sunday.

Malaysian Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya also issued a statement Sunday (shown complete in the appendix at the end of this article), acknowledging that “Despite the best efforts and resources over the last 100 days, this most extensive search in history has still not found answers.”

“Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the 239 persons on board the flight,” he said.

“We feel the families’ pain; we miss our colleagues and friends on board MH370,” CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said. “We feel the families’ anguish, and like them, Malaysia Airlines continues to hope and seek answers that will bring us closer to finding out what happened to MH370.”

Many folks have since asked me why I wrote that March 11 article, “Boeing 777 airplanes do not vanish or fall out of the sky,” which was suddenly featured prominently a hundred days ago on LinkedIn Pulse. As I was watching this shocking story, slowly unfold and grow in strength across the international media, I was only humbly speaking out – typing a letter to myself on my laptop at my dining room table very early morning on March 11 at 1 am. Using this LinkedIn ‘influence media’ venue that was just handed to me – suddenly in a March 7th email notification – I found an outlet for creatively sharing my expertise for the benefit of so many others.

In fact, the article became so popular that LinkedIn Senior Editor, John C. Abell on Bloomberg TV, cited it as one of the Top 5 trending articles published that week on LinkedIn, after being “invited as an ordinary user on the street” on March 7th to publish on LinkedIn.

As a coincidence, my March 11 penning of the article, “Boeing 777 airplanes do not vanish or fall out of the sky,” was remarkably just nearly 72 hours after Malaysia Airlines flight 370’s Boeing 777-200 disappeared from radar on March 8, after being last tracked by air traffic control at 1722 Zulu (1:22 am local Malaysian time).

Honestly, I expected only to be venting to myself my astonishment about the sudden loss of a Boeing 777-200 airliner, widely considered for two decades an aviation safety marvel of the digital-age that simply vanishing out of the sky. Besides this, a human emotion I recall was my deep sorrow, as I imagined what must have been going through the minds of the 239 passengers and crew inside this troubled Boeing 777-200 cabin in peril.

I also recall imagining that early morning on March 11, we all thought and felt this, as we watched the breaking news, and as we read the daily newspaper stories about the unfolding fate of MH370.

Perhaps, many of us, like me, may had been even thinking in our minds, “Oh no, not another Air France 447 again?“

Photo Credit: Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, Registration Number 9M-MRO (tail section shown left, as the first photo of 9M-MRO published on March 11 internationally), reported by Malaysia Airlines on March 8, as the missing aircraft of Flight 370. Shown full above is Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, Registration Number 9M-MRL.

I candidly wrote on LinkedIn Pulse a deeply human and frank concern about this missing MH370 mystery, unfolding early-on throughout that March 10 day, after ironically saying this coincidentally during a telephone conversation earlier in that evening with my mother that “Boeing 777 airplanes do not vanish or fall out of the sky.” Ironically, we discussed what she was seeing being reported on CNN about how they could not find where in the world was this huge jet that was suddenly missing.

Photo Credit: Malaysia Airlines, Boeing 777-200ER, Reg. #9M-MRO

She agreed, saying “yes son, you are so right, planes just don’t vanish or drop out of the sky. Else if they did son, your mother would not be on one.”

I immediately felt she was feeling like plenty of folks out there, who felt just exactly the same sentiment.

After a hundred days, as the sun, moon, and stars aligned to cause the fate of this horrible aviation tragedy, so too does the rest of the world agree with my dear mother and me.

Australia is estimated to have spent the most in the MH370 search at over $43 million, says the Sydney Morning Herald. The U.S has spent $11.4 million, officials at the Pentagon told NBC in April. Chinese officials have not disclosed the amount the country has spent, though Chinese warships are estimated to cost at least $100,000 per day to operate. Another 22 countries have contributed to the search efforts, says TIME Business Aviation.

On MH370’s 100th Day, we must re-dedicate ourselves to safer skies internationally.

The Boeing 777-200 represents 20 years of proven digital-age technology with a stellar safety record. The Boeing 777-200 safety record has been exemplary without incident for two decades, until the Asiana Airlines crash landing in San Francisco on July 6, 2013.

I reported on America’s News Headquarters on then that “Boeing teaches us not only how planes fly, but also how planes should crash in saving hundreds of lives” in the Asiana Airlines San Francisco Airport crash landing.

Photo Credit: Malaysia Airlines, Boeing 777-200ER, Reg. #9M-MRO

What we don’t know much about still as of June 16, 2014, marking the 100th Day, since MH370 vanished, are three ‘nagging’ and still compelling mysteries, remaining just as they were remarkably back on March 11, when I first wrote about this international aviation safety breach on LinkedIn PulseAirlines & Aviation:

The exact flight path, including an “about-face” of the flight route alternatively directed hundreds of miles off the coast of Malaysia, according to Malaysian military radar early morning on March 8, and now confirmed by Inmarsat satellite data to be somewhere directed in the southern Indian Ocean. This was apparently allegedly executed by the pilots without warning or report of any problems or concerns;

The wider “search for a cause” speculative undertaking along several hypothetical dimensions of either catastrophic cabin trauma, fire or mechanical breach, human factors error, terrorism, or possibly hijacking; and

The missing ‘black-boxes’ stored inside the missing Boeing 777-200 airliner that still holds the keys to so many questions, answers, solutions, and probable future corrections so needed to ensure that no MH370 or AF447 airliner loss inside the world’s oceanic waters ever happens again. History is not on our side, remarkably since 1948, as we have lost dozens of airliners and their ‘black-boxes’ – still never found inside the hazardous and remote oceanic regions across the globe.

Who really knows anything at this point, one hundred days since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared?

“Consequences are extraordinary. The possible debris field may be massive. A “black-box” needs to be recovered to establish any chain of evidence and facts in this mystery. And, the experts need to be placed front and center in order to perform their essential tasks of determining the circumstances and a cause of what happened. Human lives are at stake. Henceforward, patience in stating, speculating and storytelling of the truths is prudent.”

Somehow we knew this heartbreaking ending to this most compelling mystery in aviation safety and security history could be inevitable.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, in which 239 souls have vanished, potentially ranks as the largest air disaster loss inside the world’s oceanic waters, since Air France 447’s Airbus 330-200 crashed into the mid-Atlantic on June 1, 2009, over five-years ago, where 228 souls perished. The largest human fatality loss before this was the loss of American Airlines 587, which crashed into a New York suburb back on November 12, 2001, where 260 souls perished.

Precedent of large expenditures held by society for airliner loss recovery in oceanic waters is well-established by recent cost data, as CNN International reports, “the two-year search for flight 447 cost around $40 million, according to French authorities, while the investigation into the Trans World Airlines flight 800 crash into the Atlantic in 1996 cost in excess of $50 million.”

These reports (available at my website along with others) point to so much needed and continuing federal investments among several nations to proactively avoid any future international aviation safety mishaps and security breaches. This ongoing mystery, marking MH370’s 100th Day, is about “how we globally aviate, navigate and communicate across safer and secure skies of international aviation. That is,safer skies over Asia, safer skies over Australia, safer skies over Africa, safer skies over Europe, and safer skies over The Americas.” And now especially, after Air France 447 recovered eventually, and MH370 remained missing, safer skies over The Oceanics.

Something catastrophic must have happened in the cabin that disrupted operations. And, there was not enough time to send distress signals. Mainly because, there was no indication of a distress call, I have thus concluded recently on LinkedInAirlines & Aviation Channel.

“There’s an old longstanding three-principle rule when either flying, landing or saving a Boeing 777 airliner: aviate, navigate, and most of all, communicate, I have discussed previously on this Pulse Channel.

In the case of MH370, we do not know much about how the Boeing 777-200 airliner was neither navigating nor communicating. All we were left with from air traffic control communications, handing off MH370 en route to Beijing in the Gulf of Thailand sea region, was “All right, good night.”

However, this was initially leaked and unofficially translated and mistakenly reported by international media, such as CBS News and The Telegraph (U.K.), as MH370 pilot’s last words and final flight MH370 message at 1:19 am on the early morning hours of March 8, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Later, on March 30, 2014, however, the Ministry of Transport of Malaysia released the official transcript between the MH370 pilot and Malaysian air traffic controller, which reveals MH370’s final message at 1:19 am as, “Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero.”

British Yachtswoman’s Sighting. What we have also observed most recently from the British Yachtswoman, sailing the Indian Ocean off the coast of Thailand, early morning on March 8, according to her Yacht’s log, is that she believes she saw flight MH370’s Boeing 777-200 “falling in flames and smoke.”

Inmarsat says search elsewhere. “Scientists from British company Inmarsat tell BBC that Australian vessel was distracted by bogus signals,” according to The Guardian (U.K.), recently as of June 17, “Two months were spent searching 850 square kilometers of sea bed north west of Perth, but the source of the “pings” was not found and a submersible robot found no evidence of the airliner.”

“It was by no means an unrealistic location, but it was further to the northeast than our area of highest probability,” Inmarsat spokesman Chris Ashton said on June 17.

“Experts from the satellite firm modeled the most likely flight path using the hourly pings and assuming a speed and heading consistent with the plane being flown by autopilot,” reports The Guardian (U.K.) and The Daily Mail (U.K.)

“We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hot-spot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is,” explained Inmarsat spokesman Chris Ashton.

However, in a June 18 reported interview with media in Denmark, Chris McLaughlin, senior vice-president for external affairs at Inmarsat, defends the investigators’ decision to focus on the area where ping signals were detected and warns that the new search area will be extensive and very challenging.

“Our model and that of four other professional groups indicates a sustained route south for over seven hours and therefore past arc seven on the published charts,” McLaughlin points out. (The seventh arc, or “handshake”, is the final signal from the plane and thought to be when the jet ran out of fuel.)

McLaughlin goes on further to say, “There is no “hotspot.” The comment made by Inmersat scientist Chris Ashton on the BBC’s Horizon program refers to a large area of ocean and should not be thought of as a small defined point. We can only identify an approximate course based on the very limited data available to be extrapolated from our network. The search area will be extensive and very difficult.”

When asked how did Inmarsat come to its final conclusions about the probable location of where the MH370 airliner resides, McLaughlin said, “We didn’t. We have demonstrated a probable direction of travel, which has been independently agreed upon as the best fit for the data available by other professional bodies.”

“We gave initial data to the investigation within three days of the loss, through the data owner to the correct authority,” McLaughlin concluded, “Some two weeks later, following further investigation and modelling, coupled by independent review by other parties, we gave our suggested path for a southern route and this was announced by Malaysian authorities subsequently.”

“The data belonged to the investigation – NOT to Inmarsat,” he said.

Re-analysis is completed on Inmarsat satellite data released. Meanwhile, five separate computer models all place the plane in a tight cluster of spots in the south Indian Ocean — hundreds of miles southwest of the previous search site, reports CNN International.

“We recommend that the search for MH370 be focused in this area,” the group said in a statement late Tuesday, June 17.

“While there remain a number of uncertainties and some disagreements as to the interpretation of aspects of the data, our best estimates of a location of the aircraft (is) near 36.02 South 88.57 East [off the western coast of Australia at Perth],” according to the statement, which was approved by ten named experts.

The group opted to release its statement late Tuesday, June 17 in advance of a BBC documentary on the missing plane, and ahead of the Australian government’s announcement on the focus of the search, so that there would be no question about the independence of the group’s findings, said one member of the group, American Mobile Satellite Corp. co-founder Mike Exner.

“We wanted to get our best estimate out,” Exner said.

The group believes that after the Boeing 777-200 circumnavigated Indonesia, for reasons that are still unknown, the plane traveled south at an average speed of 470 knots, probably at a consistent altitude and constant heading, Exner said. All five computer models developed by the experts place the aircraft in a “pretty tight cluster…plus or minus 50 miles of each other,” he said.

Australian Authorities see daylight on new search zone by end of June. Investigators hunting for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Flight MH370 will announce a new search zone within two weeks by the end of June, authorities said Wednesday, June 18, according to NBC News.

The new area in the hunt for the Boeing 777 “will be confirmed before the end of June, after extensive collaborative analysis by a range of specialists,” Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center said in a statement.

If all else fails, are we back to the “5th arc” and the British Yachtswoman sighting? As a related evidence theory tied to a concept of “specific knowledge of time and place” also now worth looking further into, once again, I might be boldly going out on a limb here. But, if we give credence to the Yacht’s log of location data and the British Yachtswoman visual sightings (referring back to my recent LinkedIn Pulse Airlines & Aviation article, “British woman reports seeing MH370 falling on fire“), a probable crash location of MH370 could be reasonably speculated along the “5th arc.”

This is also perhaps why the ATSB officials are quietly looking more closely, as they should, at the exactness of the claimed sighting by the British Yachtswoman and her Yacht’s log data provided last week, according to MSN World.

Let’s wait and see what unfolds along this aspect of the MH370 search, as investigators continue their hard work.

Real-time data streams from the aircraft, tracking its real-time condition and whereabouts during the flight, perhaps streamed and stored in ‘the cloud’, is indeed feasible and plausible, as a sound technological solution. So, we will never again suffer an oceanic loss of neither an Air France flight 447 airliner, nor a Malaysia Airlines flight 370 airliner.

In other words, we all generally understand the location of MH370’s Boeing 777-200 airliner during its last moments in the sky. However, we only have an extremely brief understanding of the last flight condition that the airliner was in. This is what’s so widely unacceptable about the missing MH370 mystery.

MH370’s Boeing 777-200 we definitely know would have communicated something back to Malaysia Airlines, if there was a mechanical failure with something catastrophic happening. Moreover, shoddy maintenance was not a significant concern, as the Boeing 777-200 aircraft was one of fifteen of Malaysia Airline’s most valuable assets.

Photo Credit: World’s Top Aviation Leaders recently in attendance at the International Air Transport Association Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit, hosted by Qatar Airways in Doha, Qatar, on June 1-3, 2014.

The focus of the summit meeting was to enable its 240 members, comprising about 84 percent of global air traffic, to discuss the future outlook of the airline business sector, its growth and industrial organization.

IATA officially agreed three weeks ago prior to its 70th annual meeting in Doha, Qatar, “to come up with proposals for better tracking of commercial aircraft by the end of September. IATA said its members would implement measures voluntarily, before any rules were in place,” reports Reuters.

“In principle the community has agreed. There’s no question this is something we need to do,” Nancy Graham, director of International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO’s) Air Navigation Bureau, recently told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

“We are developing the voluntary path and a rule for the future. We intend to have regulation to support that globally.”

Asked by reporters whether the cost of implementing new standards was a stumbling block for airlines, Graham said: “Not at all, they’re absolutely in solidarity. There’s no price you can put on safety or certainty on where the aircraft are.”

1. Human Factors Error. Two essential questions must be addressed: (1) whether training, instrumentation, and cockpit procedures can be modified all around the world so that no pilot will ever make this kind of catastrophic airliner loss mistake again, or (2) whether the inclusion of the human element will always entail the possibility of a catastrophic outcome.

“After all, the men who crashed AF447 were three highly trained pilots flying for one of the most prestigious fleets in the world. If they could fly a perfectly good plane into the ocean, then what airline could plausibly say, ‘Our pilots would never do that’?”

Nine out of 10 aircraft accidents are due to human error, and the remaining 1 out of 10 that are attibuted to mechanical issues or hijacking are actually quite rare.

2. Explosive Devices. I honestly do not remotely envision or even speculate a Boeing 777-200 simply breaking up in midair suddenly. The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, operating as flight MH370, was in the safest cruise speed of normal flight. Something might have happened that was catastrophic perhaps. But so far, that’s speculation, as no reports of an emergency locator transmitter was even activated.

3. Terrorism. When it comes to allegations of terrorism, we just do not have enough evidence to show that it was a terrorist attack. While we can not completely rule out the scenario, until we recover a ‘black-box’, we must emphasized that, disinformation and misleading data only fuels speculative speculative ‘reboots’ and ‘fits-and-starts’ of the ongoing MH370 search and recovery.

4. Passengers Manifesto Security Concerns. My opinion out-front very early-on March 12 to Government Security News, regarding the stolen passports, was that “it was most likely due to illegal immigration.” I also expressed concern regarding safety and security at international ports of entry, as well as international airports around the world.

5. Lost Airliner ‘Black-Boxes‘. The chain of evidence is the black box and the aircraft itself, most airlines and aviation experts, including myself, have said across the international news. The black box is one of the most resilient pieces of the aircraft. It can provide a tremendous amount of information, as we all now know after the recovery of AF447’s Airbus A330-200 ‘black-boxes’ and the resulting final causal report findings of the Air France 447 crash investigation.

‘Black-Box’ in ‘The Cloud’ is the technological leap in live-streaming of ‘black-box ‘data to be gained from the Missing MH370 Mystery and its disaster response and recovery.

Indeed, “Canadian airline First Air will soon become one of the few in the world to have the option to live-stream black-box data in the event of an emergency – and the technology they are using is all Canadian made,” according to according to Global News.

I concurred on March 27 and 29 with this technological leap, inside The Telegraph (U.K.), “Vital flight information would be retrieved, if ‘black-box’ data was automatically stored in ‘the cloud’, and that using the internet to gather and store flight information in real-time would mean that key data would not be lost.” Further telling Reuters on March 19 that “it is time to move the ‘black-box’ to ‘the cloud’ at least for essential limited flight recorder data for long flights over remote areas.”

“The ‘black-box’ data should not be lost in remote terrains or oceans, but rather should be secured and stored in ‘the cloud’,” I have restated on March 27 to The Telegraph (U.K.).

“If we are able to transmit Beyonce from the Super Bowl live to millions of people, we should be able to send this sort of data to ‘the cloud’,” retorting further to The Telegraph (U.K.) – like Beyonce does instantly now, sending out globally her latest mega-hit recordings!

We need now into this milestone of hundred days of MH370, more than ever, so much more than two eyes to search out MH370, lost now for months, perhaps even longer for years. Indeed, we may need more Ideas, Imagination, and Innovation to ensure international aviation safety and security well into the future.

Going forward beyond MH370 100th Day.

Regarding the ongoing investigation, sadly in the past one hundred days, this has indeed shifted from a ‘search and rescue‘ mission to a ‘search for a cause‘ mission.

U.S. officials are now standing by, as Australian safety investigators, and now a Dutch private commercial contractor, begin in August, undertaking the oceanic survey and underwater mapping of the southern Indian Ocean, off the western Australian coast at Perth.

Each day we go forward beyond the MH370 100th Day, we remain concerned about whether or not we are indeed mapping out the right area of the vast southern Indian Ocean. Where we stand now is focusing our MH370 search squarely between the now widely-assessed Inmarsat “ping handshake” data, and the generally understood Inmarsat satellite “5th and 7th arcs.”

The passage of time can also affect the recovery process, as the ocean currents shift how the MH370 Boeing 777-200 airliner debris is spread across the ocean floor, as time further progresses into months, perhaps even years.

Photo Credit: Malaysia Airlines, Boeing 777-200ER, Reg. #9M-MRO

The greater context of this 100th Day, marking the MH370 incident, must include a discussion of the general public’s fundamental understanding of science and technology. We must understand science and technology, because it is all around us daily. Besides this, science and technology is so necessary to ensure the integrity of aviation safety and security worldwide in order to better know how to deal with future air transportation mishaps and incidents.

MH370’s 100th Day observance also serves to stress the importance of compassionately considering the human element throughout the MH370 search and investigation. Aviation safety and security is about saving lives. From the perspectives of the grieving families and friends of the 239 loved ones lost, there could be real lives saved here among the living.

Nevertheless, we need to gather enough information and data to be more wise about future aviation safety and security to save lives. This is a human problem and we have to stay with the human dimension until the ‘black-box’ is found, which will reveal so much we do not know now at this moment of MH370’s 100th Day.

We remained cautiously optimistic, regarding the lives of the grieving families and friends of MH370’s lost 239 passengers and crew. Hopefully and prayerfully lives can be restored, when and if Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777-200 is recovered, once again cautioning months, perhaps even years away.

Much as Air France 447 was eventually recovered long after AF447’s 100th Day. After all, recovery of AF447’s Airbus 330-200 airliner from the mid-Atlantic was the first and only one recovered, since 1948! Dozens of other lost airliners have remained lost in the world’s oceans, as indicated below. History is not on our side here. And so, the missing Boeing 777-200 search and recovery international challenge continues, well beyond MH370’s 100th Day gone missing observed Monday, June 16, 2014.

“People always want to find the solution to the mystery. It’s a natural urge.”

Besides all the talk of satellites, pings, transponders, circuit breakers, Bluefin-21 unmanned underwater drones, Ocean Shield surface ships, oceanic underwater survey maps, and so forth, what investigators also have on their side are basic scientific principles. Like everything else in this world, planes are bound by fundamental rules of science — things like fuel burn, lift, weight ratios and, not the least, gravity.

Jets don’t just vanish and they don’t just fall out of the sky. They go up and they come down.

Humbly speaking, I was slightly off in my over-optimism a hundred days ago. May I make a correction now on MH370’s 100th Day? People should now be thinking more in terms of months and years. Airliner oceanic loss history, since 1948, showing debris evidence either never found or airliner recovery after extensive searches for years, clearly tells us this.

It has been the longest 100 days since the disappearance of our MH370.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the 239 persons on board the flight. The families has been on our minds throughout these past 100 days, and will continue to do for a long while to come. We feel the families’ pain; we miss our colleagues and friends on board MH370. We feel the families’ anguish, and like them, Malaysia Airlines continues to hope and seek answers that will bring us closer to finding out what happened to MH370.

We thank the Governments and agencies of Malaysia, Australia and China, and the many nations that have come forward to search for MH370. Despite the best efforts and resources over the last 100 days, this most extensive search in history has still not found answers.

Malaysia Airlines continues to support the search operations, continues to support the next-of-kin and continues to keep in touch.

It has been the longest and most painful 100 days in Malaysia Airlines’ history.

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